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Monday, August 27, 2012

Raw Thoughts from the Guild Wars 2 Headstart

Guild Wars 2's Headstart access unlocked this past Saturday so I was able to take full advantage of a free weekend to play about 24 hours worth of the game. All things considered, it was the best MMO launch in recent memory despite some brief downtime. I've collected some raw thoughts on my experiences so far.

Systems

Crafting seems tedious as you need to farm early game materials before you can move on to more useful items. I should not need to go farm bolts of Jute when leveling far beyond the content that has those materials

Inventory management has been a significant problem even with unlocking 8 slot bags. This is mostly because of the immense amount of crafting materials. The crafting station gives you access to your bank directly but cannot pull items from there when you are actually crafting. Instead all those items need to be pulled manually into your bags.

I always went after the skill points in the area but this has given me an overabundance of skill points. I'm not even thinking about what skill I want next anymore because I'm rolling in skill points. Unsure if this was intended.

Technical

Performance is pretty stable on my 560ti though I did dip below 60fps in a few places that were highly noticeable.

The vistas are beautiful but you take a framerate hit to see them

Overflow server is nice but significantly lag by comparison to the real server

A few people are playing with a gamepad using Xpadder - need to try this.

Trading Post being down is unfortunate but not the end of the world

Still can't validate my email address.

Charr models seem to not seem like equipped for all terrain as their models clip through the environment and make platforming more challenging than intended.

The option to use command switches and remembering of username and password is a welcome change from previous MMO launchers

STILL cannot rebind middle mouse button to tab/target nearest enemy.

PVP

World Vs World has the worst of the Battlefield experience in that I need to run for many minutes before I see any action and then die immediately because I'm not with a large group and then repeat the process all over again.

When I did eventually arrive on the correct side of the battle lines it seems like a constant back and forth between multiple towns that repeats for eternity.

I'm not seeing the strategy yet but that may change over time as guilds adapt

Structured PVP seems to be far more enjoyable and balanced experience. I see myself playing this much more than World Vs World.

Misc

I still find myself smashing the auto attack button in PvE more often than not. A lot of your 2-5 keys are situational so there's really not much else to do at times. I'm hoping that I will need to adjust strategy more often as I enter instances later in the game.

While doing a combination of crafting, my personal story, dynamic events and hearts, I still find myself under leveled time and time again with only hearts/areas to go to that are 1-3 levels above me.

The most fun so far is been some intense jumping puzzle that required a lot of time, thought and significant platforming skills

My opinion of Hearts has not changed as they still seem to be quests found in other MMOs in a different format but I will say the writing on some of them has been excellent.

Voice acting has been phenomenal in some places and fallen flat in others.

I feel as though introducing instances for 5 people should happened earlier than level 30.

I am having a lot of fun with Guild Wars 2 so far but there are a some things I could have seen ArenaNet done differently or polished a bit more. They are hanging their hat on WvW but i wonder what percentage of the population will even participate in the activity. Luckily, the game is content rich so I could see people sticking around for the sPVP or PvE as well. I'll have more thoughts as I continue to progress through the game. See you in Tyria!